10 Useful Options You Can Configure In Your

Router’s Web Interface

by Chris Hoffman on August 7th, 2017

Your wireless router has a variety of useful options you can configure. These are
practically hidden—you wouldn’t know these features exist unless you were digging
through your router’s configuration pages. But they’re worth knowing about.

Bear in mind that different routers have different options. You may not have all the
options listed here on your own router. The options will also be in different places with
different names.

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Accessing Your Router’s Web Interface

The vast majority of routers have web-
based configuration pages that you can RELATED ARTICLE
How to
access in your web browser as long as
Find Your Router’s IP
you’re on the same local network as the Address on Any
router. To access your router’s web Computer,
interface, you’ll first need to find your Smartphone, or Tablet
router’s local IP address. In general, you
can just pop open the settings for your network connection and look for the “default
gateway,” “gateway,” or “router” entry, but if you have trouble, check out our guide to
finding router’s IP address on any computer, smartphone, or tablet.

Once you have the IP address, all you

have to do is type it into your browser’s RELATED ARTICLE
How to
address bar and hit Enter. On most
Access Your Router If
routers, you’ll be asked to log in with your You Forget the
username and password combination. If Password
you don’t know these—or you’ve never
changed them—your router is probably
using its default credentials. Check your router’s manual or perform a web search for its
model number and “default password.” If you’ve previously changed the password and
can’t remember it, you can reset your router’s password to the default.

Once you’ve logged in, you can now browse your router’s web-based administration
pages and configure its settings.

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See Who’s Connected

Your router likely provides a way to see
who’s connected to your wireless RELATED ARTICLE
How to
network. You can usually find this option
See Who’s Connected
on a general status page or in the wireless to Your Wi-Fi
section, and the feature will be named Network
something like “client list,” “connected
devices,” or similar.

If you give your devices and computers meaningful names, this will help you verify that
only approved devices are connected.

The router’s administration pages also show other information about the Internet
connection, including your external IP address (the one the Internet sees), wireless
security options, and more.

Wireless Channel

You can modify a variety of wireless

network settings in your router’s web RELATED ARTICLE
How To
interface, including its wireless channel.
Get a Better Wireless
Changing your router’s wireless channel Signal and Reduce
can speed up your Wi-Fi. If many other Wireless Network
wireless networks in your area are using Interference
the same wireless channel, interference
will result in a slower connection.
Before changing your wireless channel, use something like Wi-Fi Analyzer for Android or
the inSSIDer utility for Windows. They’ll scan the networks in the local area and find the
best wireless channel with the least interference.

Extend an Existing Network

If you need to create a wireless network

covering a large area, one router may not RELATED ARTICLE
How To
be enough. While you can use tools
Extend Your Wi-Fi
designed for the job—like range Network With Simple
extenders or mesh networks—you can Access Points
also use multiple wireless routers if you
have extras around. But you don’t
necessarily want to create separate wireless networks for each individual router. With
the repeating feature found on many routers, you can have the router join itself to the
main network, functioning as a repeater for that network. This allows you to create one
large Wi-Fi network from many different routers.

Quality of Service

Many routers contain quality of service, or

QoS, features. QoS prioritizes traffic to RELATED ARTICLE
How to
give you a better experience. For example,
Use Quality of
QoS can reduce the network bandwidth Service (QoS) to Get
available to BitTorrent transfers and Faster Internet When
prioritize web pages, preventing your You Really Need It
BitTorrent transfers from slowing down
your web browsing. This is particularly
useful if you have a network with multiple people and want to prevent one bad apple
from slowing down the entire network. QoS features are often fairly configurable, so you
may even be able to prioritize one computer’s network connections over others.

Dynamic DNS

If you’re hosting some sort of server on

your computer, you’ll need to be able to RELATED ARTICLE
How To
connect to that computer from over the
Easily Access Your
Internet. However, many ISPs assign Home Network From
dynamic IP addresses that change Anywhere With
regularly. Dynamic DNS gets around this Dynamic DNS
by assigning a special address like
yourcomputer.service.com to your computer. Whenever your external IP address
changes, your router will check in with the dynamic DNS service and update the IP
address associated with yourcomputer.service.com, so you’ll always be able to connect
to your computer there.

Routers generally have Dynamic DNS or DDNS pages where this feature can be
configured. You’ll need to create an account with a supported service and choose a
hostname first—check your router’s DDNS page for a list of supported services, and then
check out our guide to getting it all set up.

Port Forwarding, Port Triggering, DMZ & UPnP

Because of the way network address
translation (NAT) works, routers block RELATED ARTICLE
Do I
incoming traffic by default. If you want to
Need a Firewall if I
set up a computer as a server or use Have a Router?
other services that require incoming
connections—such as peer-to-peer file
transfers or some forms of VoIP—you may need these incoming connections.

Routers provide a variety of ways to enable this. You can forward ports so incoming
connections on these ports will always be sent to a certain computer. You can set up
port triggering, so port forwarding will automatically be enabled whenever a program
opens a connection on a certain port. You can use a demilitarized zone (DMZ) to
automatically send all incoming connections on your network to a single computer.
UPnP is also generally enabled by default. UPnP allows programs to forward their own
ports on demand, although it isn’t very secure.

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If you’re setting up port forwarding or a DMZ, you should also consider assigning a static
IP address so the internal computer’s IP address won’t change and break your port
forwarding rules. All of these options—and more—are available in your router’s web
interface.

Set a Network-Wide DNS Server

You can change the DNS server for your entire network on your router. This allows you
to enable parental controls for every device on your network, or just make them use a
faster DNS server. There are many reasons why you might want to use a third-party DNS
server.

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Changing Your DNS Parental Controls On
Server Your Home Network

Parental Controls, Website Blocking, and Access Scheduling

Routers often contain parental control
features, allowing you to block certain RELATED ARTICLE
4 Ways to
types of traffic or specific websites. You
Set Up Parental
also may be able to control times when Controls On Your
Internet access is disabled, preventing Home Network
your children from using the Internet at
3am. On some routers, you may even be
able to configure this on a per-computer basis, limiting only specific computers. Even if
your router doesn’t contain parental controls, you can still set up parental controls by
changing your DNS server to OpenDNS, as mentioned above.

Reboot Your Router

Sometimes, rebooting your router can help fix network issues. You can do this by
unplugging the router or pressing a button on it, but the router may be in a hard-to-get-
to location.

You’ll usually find a convenient button to reboot your router somewhere on its
configuration pages, so you can reset your router without even getting up.

For Advanced Users: Third-Party Router Firmwares

If you want more out of your router, you can install a variety of third-party router
firmwares. You’ll need to have a router that’s supported by these firmwares, so this isn’t
for everyone. In fact, if you really want to use these router firmwares, you should take
this into account when you buy a router and ensure it’s compatible.

Popular router firmwares include DD-WRT, Tomato, and OpenWRT. These firmwares all
provide additional options that you wouldn’t normally get on your router. OpenWRT in
particular is a full embedded Linux distribution with a package manager, allowing you to
access a Linux shell and install software on your router, effectively allowing you to use it
as an always-running, low-power server.

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We haven’t covered everything you can do with your router’s web-based administration
pages. Feel free to take a look around your router’s web interface and see all the options
you can configure. You can also consult your router’s manual for information specific to
your router model.

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Chris Hoffman is a technology writer and all-around computer geek. He's as at

home using the Linux terminal as he is digging into the Windows registry.
Connect with him on Google+.

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